Ancient Drama and Comedy

Length: 1000-1500 words, typed, double-spaced. Citation: Use MLA format (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Requirements: Thesis. Your essay must be governed by a thesis that (a) responds directly to the essay topic, (b) is arguable, and (c) is stated at the end of the first paragraph having clearly defined all the central terms. Textual Support. Your thesis must be supported by major interpretive claims (topic sentences) that are supported by at least one appropriate quote per body paragraph. Your ability to select, interpret, and apply the appropriate textual evidence is key to doing well with the essay. This is not a research paper. You should focus on developing an analysis based on your own reading of the text (and notes from lectures). Reasoning. You must consistently use and apply logical reasoning in developing your thesis. Writing. Your essay must be written well. There should be no awkward sentences, rough transitions between paragraphs, incoherent paragraphs, extraneous information/unnecessary sentences, typos, or stylistic errors. Audience. You are writing for an educated audience very familiar with the assigned texts. (You don't need to summarize the plays or provide biographical data about the authors.) Topics: Choose ONE of the topics below. 1. Tragic Hero. Based on your reading of Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Medea, write an essay in which you define, explain, and illustrate (from these three texts) what makes for a "tragic" hero. While you can focus on a singular character, this topic is necessarily comparative, requiring you to support your claims with reference to characters from the other assigned plays. 2. Tragedy. Based on the selections from Aristotle's Poetics (in Greek Tragedy, pp. 230-236), analyze either Agamemnon or Medea in terms of their "tragic" qualities. In other words, what is ancient Athenian tragedy all about? 3. Female Heroes. We have read three plays with strong female characters who take extraordinary actions. Write an analysis of one or more of these characters in terms of what they suggest about gender in the ancient Greek world (or about "woman," patriarchy, etc. in general). 4. Comedy as History.* Based on your reading of Aristophanes and/or Plautus, write a cultural history of an object, set of objects, cultural or social practice, or social/political relationship. 5. Old vs. New Comedy. Based on the four comic plays we have read so far, how would you define the most significant difference(s) between the Old (Aristophanes) and New (Plautus) comedies? The key here is to get at the most crucial differences and not to just list a series of similarities and differences. 6. Comic Critique. I suggested that Roman Comedy provides a kind of social critique, but that it ends up being basically conservative. Write an essay, based on your reading of the two Plautus plays, that analyzes and evaluates this thesis. You can suggest another topic, but you need to have it approved by me before you begin writing. *The history topic paper paper can take a few different approaches (you should only choose one). You could write a paper on some historical feature of cultural and social life in Ancient Athens or Rome as it appears in the plays of Aristophanes or Plataus assigned for this class. You would analyze the available evidence in the play(s) and attempt to draw conclusions regarding the cultural and social history of Ancient Athens or Republican Rome based on that evidence. In other words, what does the work of Aristophanes or Plautus tell us about ___________ as a feature of life in ancient Athens or Rome? In this case, the play is contributing to our understanding of the history of ancient Athens. Or, you could find some depiction of life in ancient Athens or Rome from the plays and do some research to better understand this historical phenomenon. In this case, your research into the history of ancient Athens or Rome is contributing to our understanding of the play(s). This is trickier, because it becomes too easy to end up relying on the ideas of other people instead of your own exposition of the play(s). Make sure that your historical research draws on reliable scholarly sources which you must cite in a Works Cited page at the end of your paper. Web pages, blogs, Wikipedia, Encyclopedias, and definitely AI are NOT acceptable sources. You should use the IVC Library to do this research, reading only from peer-reviewed journals, monographs, and essay collections. Your paper itself should still be primarily a close reading of the assigned play(s). This topic will work best if you had a question about something in one of the plays that seems to require a better understanding of Athenian or Roman cultural and social history. This will NOT work for the tragedies.